Front end power loaders are commonly used on tractors and other mobile vehicles as attachments. When the loader is not to be utilized, it is dismounted and parked using the loader bucket or other attachment and a parking stand for support, thus permitting the tractor to be used for other operations unencumbered by the presence of the loader.
There are a multitude of different parking stand configurations, with the present invention being of the type which remains stored on the loader when not being used for parking the loader. Many of these known designs require that the operator remove and re-insert fastening pins in order to move the parking stand between stored and parking positions, which is not entirely satisfactory since it requires the operator to precisely align holes provided in the parking stand components with holes provided in the loader lift arm in order permit the fastening pins to be re-inserted. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,257,730, 4,347,031 and 4,337,015 disclose parking stands of this type.
Other conventional parking stand designs are unable to accommodate the wide range of tire sizes used on larger tractor and loader combinations. Part of the problem with these designs stems from the fact that they include support legs having one end or the other pivotally attached to the loader boom or lift arm arrangement, thus limiting the flexibility of the support leg to be moved between stowed and parked positions without encountering interference with the tractor front wheels, especially when the opposite loader boom arms are spaced such that they overlap the space occupied by the front wheels.
Therefore, the problem to be solved is that of providing a parking stand design which overcomes the aforementioned drawbacks of the prior art designs.